ABSTRACT
Our empirical research and experience make clear that gender continues to be an important organizing and disempowering principle in the school system. Equity in education is not only a matter of numbers. While this Handbook provides many figures and statistics, the authors do not reduce equity issues to a series of variables, or to handicaps to be overcome. Instead, the authors detail the systematic, persistent, and group-based power and subordination problems in education. They also describe promising gender innovations needed throughout our educational systems to foster change and achieve equity. The material in these chapters challenges many current policies and practices, by reporting on empirical research, by noting serious gaps in the research, by describing programs that have and have not been successful, and by offering perspectives that can alter our current understanding of equity in education. The Handbook includes facts, assumptions, strategies, practices, and content related to curriculum, governance, socialization, psychology, working with diverse populations and multiple educational levels. It is a landmark and definitive piece of work for anyone studying, teaching, or interested in gender equity in education.
